Well, uh, gee, can you say "social commentary" here? Jiri Barta, by gift of being Czech and being an animator, is often compared to Jan Svankmajer, but if anything this short film underlies their differences more than their similarities.
The film is split, sort of, into two movements. The first is simply a detailing of the day in the life of rejected mannequins, as they repetitively go about their business day after day after day like automatons. The second half is when their life gets invaded by much more up-to-date, but still rejected mannequins who first displace them, and then fight them, and then become a part of their lives as well.
In the 1980s Czechoslovakia switched from a socialist nation to a consumer capitalist one, and most of Barta's work deals with that exchange. This is probably his most blunt. The lives that the mannequins live before the invasion of the commercial is dreary, dull, dusty, broken, and even downright sinister in some regards. However, the capitalist life isn't much better as its full of distractions, drug abuse, and addiction. Both are filled with seedy sex. And in the end, the differences aren't worth comparing, because the only one who wins is the television.
--PolarisDiB
The film is split, sort of, into two movements. The first is simply a detailing of the day in the life of rejected mannequins, as they repetitively go about their business day after day after day like automatons. The second half is when their life gets invaded by much more up-to-date, but still rejected mannequins who first displace them, and then fight them, and then become a part of their lives as well.
In the 1980s Czechoslovakia switched from a socialist nation to a consumer capitalist one, and most of Barta's work deals with that exchange. This is probably his most blunt. The lives that the mannequins live before the invasion of the commercial is dreary, dull, dusty, broken, and even downright sinister in some regards. However, the capitalist life isn't much better as its full of distractions, drug abuse, and addiction. Both are filled with seedy sex. And in the end, the differences aren't worth comparing, because the only one who wins is the television.
--PolarisDiB